The State of Iraq — Part 6: Shock and Awe
Politics, Strategy and Tactics
Continued on from The State of Iraq — Part 5: The Psyche For War
At 0400hrs on 20 March 2003, the main body of coalition forces crossed into Iraq from Kuwait, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. They followed the Special Forces, who had begun their work two days earlier, and the aerial campaign that hit Baghdad and other key sites the night before.
A 160,000-strong invasion force would topple the Saddam regime within two weeks, just over ten years since they did it for the first time in 1991.
For the military, the War in Iraq is two stories really:
The first is a tale of overwhelming might, tactics and fury. A conventional military that did shock and awe the Iraqi Army. They completed their mission exactly as planned, and in a few weeks removed Saddam and crumbled his regime.
The second story is the famous one: a fable of failed policy and politics, a tale of bad strategy and tactical errors, and the chronicle of lions who were led by lambs.
So if failed nation-building is the true legacy of the invasion —Why?
Three Block War
The purpose of war changed in the 1990s, it became a mechanism of regime change and nation-building, and this was proven successful in small doses. Bosnia is a good example of this, there are few others. Governments wanted militaries to serve a purpose other than defeating the enemy because times were changing — they had to adapt to the late 90s concept of the Three Block War.
In one moment in time, our service members will be feeding and clothing displaced refugees, providing humanitarian assistance. In the next moment, they will be holding two warring tribes apart — conducting peacekeeping operations –and, finally, they will be fighting a highly lethal mid-intensity battle — all on the same day … all within three city blocks. It will be what we call “the Three Block War.” — Krulak, “The Three Block War.”
This was a fundamental shift in the very purpose of the Armed Forces, one that it was not fully prepared for. Soldiers are trained to close with and kill the enemy, and all activity is conducted to enable this. The problem with the Three Block War was that it went against the psyche of the people in it, and those who commanded it. This shift in purpose is generational and technologically slow and if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail — in 2003 the I Marine Expeditionary Force was a basket of hammers.
The defeat of Saddam after two weeks was a catastrophic victory, and although the tank battles stopped, that energy had to go somewhere. Troops were as wound up as the public, and expecting a genuine war, they turned up in Iraq and were convinced they were going to Khe Sanh or Bastogne, and I can not stress this enough, because that is the energy that they were supposed to have for the invasion. This shock and awe tap could not be turned off so easily after the fall of Saddam.
These same soldiers were placed into civilian-facing roles such as checkpoint security, detention camp guards, and prisoner processing. Troops were not prepared to move into stability operations, the doctrine for which did not exist at the time. They had to change direction on a pinhead to enter the next block in the war, but this was not smooth and strategically they were already screwed — some of the most foolhardy political and strategic decisions in Iraqi governance were made and no tactical military commander could have prevented what happened next.
The New Iraq
Unlike in 1991, the removal of Saddam and the destruction of his entire regime was the policy this time. Powell, Rumsfield and the Bush Jr administration had learned this from the last time there were in power — under the Bush Sr presidency. The question is, how do you dismantle a country? Enter Paul Bremer — a US Republican politician who became the most powerful man in Iraq in 2004, he and his State Department colleagues ruled through decrees and under his direct guidance, the Coalition Provisional Authority made the new Iraq in their own image.
Order Number 1 of the Coalition Provisional Authority was titled ‘DE-BA`ATHIFICATION OF IRAQI SOCIETY’. This is still a running joke to the modern military, even for those who were there. Ba’ath membership was criminalised and individuals holding positions in every layer of national government institutions were assessed for their possible affiliation with the Ba’ath Party. Iraqi Ba’athism was a national, cultural and political way of life and should not have been ostracised in the rebuilding.
To reinforce the blunder, Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 2: ‘DISSOLUTION OF ENTITIES’ dissolved the Iraqi military and intelligence apparatus. The members of which, along with the homeless Ba’athists reformed into militias. The US discarded more than half a million troops and government officials who faded into the hills and desert with guns and uniforms and networks and skills. President Bush said this was not policy, but was found to be supportive of the decision all the same. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (remember him from Dawa’a al-Jihad, the Mujahadeen circles and Peshawar?) created al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and here many recently jobless Iraqi soldiers would find a place.
Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri (King of Clubs), the Vice President under Saddam became the leader of the Naqshbandi Army, one of the most ferocious thorns in the side of the Coalition forces. Newly formed exiled Ba’ath and Sunni militias fought against the Coalition Provisional Authority and US-led militaries and they fought the Western-backed government of Iraqi-Kurdish President Jalal Talabani when it formed a year later. To combat this, those Coalition soldiers who geared up for conventional war had no strategy given to them, and once again fell folly to the sins of counterinsurgency and started measuring success in body bags.
The longer the war continued post-invasion, the more the liberator became the invader. The more the soldiers were thrown at problems absent strategic review, the more problems they caused. Abu Ghraib, Baha Mousa and other horrific acts can be partially attributed to the poor planning of the war, and it snowballed into a public opinion hole from which ceaseless aggression emerged. As if to drive home the point, in 2004, the Jihadist organisation Mutanda al-Ansar executed US hostage Nick Berg claiming that “the dignity of the Muslim men and women in Abu Ghraib and others is not redeemed except by blood and souls”.
Any way you slice it, the strategy went against the established principles of counterinsurgency. Galula, Kirckullen, Nagl… any military or academic analysis of counterinsurgency said that the way things were being done was wrong. Vietnam, Algeria, and Malaysia, all the lessons learned in blood did not prevent more. In 2005, the US Army produced its own Field Manual 3–24 Counterinsurgency which pioneered new thought on operations, but it was too late. The population's trust was lost and therefore the war.
War Inc.
The War in Iraq was such a terrible blending of military and businesses one is led to question if making money was the real aim. Plenty of other places cover the Cheney-Halliburton nexus, but let us say that the US DODs decision to award Halliburton the no-bid $7bn contract to restore Iraq’s oil industry in March 2003, was perhaps not a strategically sound one. It was also not a great decision in hindsight (or at the time?) to award the PMC Blackwater a no-bid contract to provide security in Iraq which saw them earn over $480m for the work between June 2004 and June 2006. In 2008 there were c.160,000 private military contractors in Iraq, which is important because days before Paul Bremer left the de facto presidency of Iraq in 2004, he made one final law:
Contractors shall not be subject to Iraqi laws or regulations in matters relating to the terms and conditions of their Contracts, including licensing and registering employees, businesses and corporations — Coalition Provisional Authority Number 17
Private companies that had been contracted to rebuild Iraq, restructure the government and provide security didn’t have to register their companies, people and weapons or follow Iraqi laws. We knew this would end with war crimes.
Over $130bn was paid to contractors in the rebuilding effort during the war, and remember this rebuild was going to finance itself with oil revenue. Money flew into Iraq but, the people in charge did not know how to plan and administer it directly and had to turn to contractors who also had no practical experience in doing so. They, in turn, were forced to deal with local contractors, many of whom were corrupt or inept. Down and down the money went, but Iraq did not stabilise. The strategic decision-makers in post-invasion Iraq had already failed at every level of nation-building, and many private companies made a fortune at the same time
So What?
The first stage of the War in Iraq was a resounding military success, regardless of the justification for it, or what happened next. The military was not orientated, prepared or trained for post-invasion operations, because it was so poorly thought out.
Immediately after the removal of Saddam, policy sat in the hands of the politicians and under the leadership of Paul Bremer, Iraq turned from a war into an insurgency. Military objectives were ruled by non-military advisors and contractors — Iraq became a failed state because of this.
Through the Coalition Provisional Authority and Bremer, President Bush and Dick Cheney not only snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, but they buried victory in an unmarked grave. There is probably not a single military commander in Iraq that could have stopped CPA 1 and 2, or turned the woeful political strategy into a viable counterinsurgency. Not a single rational political or military figure would have thought that mass contracting out the rebuilding effort or contractor immunity was the best approach to stabilising Iraq, but that could be the point.
Opening Iraqi oil up to the global market was established as a priority, destabilising Ba’athists was a policy of the US government and regional powers, and the enforcement of liberalism and democracy was a strategy of the neoliberal western governments. It either all went wrong, or it went to plan — and I do not know what is worse.
